Strange computer failure

Hi all,
Two days ago my computer started freezing with the bouncing ball of death. It never recovered from this, and I had to do a hard restart every time.

Most times, the restart did not work. It would try to boot but usually showed the picture of a folder with a question mark. When this occurred, if I tried to boot up to Recovery, it would go to Lion Internet Recovery and Disk Utility wouldn't even show the existence of a HD.

However, it seemed that if I waited at least an hour (not sure about this stat) that I'd be able to boot back up and everything would be normal for a bit.

Installed smcFanControl (to increase fan speed and see temp):
Everything would be fine for a while, then temp would spike to 140 F or more (with fan at 6000 rpm).

The MBP is under AppleCare, but the SSD is obviously after market. I bought it in the US but am currently in Brazil where it's more difficult (but not impossible) to receive service.

I ended up buying a new HD to test and not wait for service, but I don't really know if this is a HD problem. (I'm in the process of using Internet Recovery on the new HD and have posted a separate thread about this slow process - even though I have an excellent internet connection.)

Pragmatous,
Thanks for the info. Though I've got to say that this doesn't sound right to me. This firmware was released in 2009, I bought my computer in 2010, and I've used it for a year with the SSD without a problem.

Furthermore, using a new traditional (non-SSD) HD, I'm currently running Internet Recovery, and it's taking a LONG time -- so far over 12 hours. It's been stuck at its latest status (about 90% finished) for about 6 hours.

I wonder if the problem has struck again? If so, what sort of hardware problem with cause intermittent failures like this?

Anybody know what happens if I shutdown during Internet Recovery and start back up later? Does it start the download from scratch, or is it able to save what it's already downloaded?

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